As spring approaches, advocates of comprehensive immigration reform are optimistic that behind-the-scenes bipartisan negotiations are on track to construct long-awaited legislation that could make it to the president’s desk by the end of summer.

But that doesn't mean that everyone’s pleased with the timeline.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, six Republican senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee urged further hearings and a slower process on the Senate legislation, which has been negotiated behind closed doors by a bipartisan “Gang of Eight.”

“The last time Congress considered legislation of this magnitude that was written behind closed doors and passed with no process, it resulted in sweeping changes to our healthcare system, the negative consequences of which are only now coming to light,” the six GOP senators wrote.

“If we bring these important issues to the Senate floor without them having been worked through committee, it is a prescription for a real problem.”

The letter is signed by Judiciary Committee members Sens.  Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch and John Cornyn.

"If we are serious about protecting our national interest and the best interests of American workers, we must provide all members of the Senate, and, most importantly, the public, a full and fair opportunity to become adequately informed," the writers state.

The other two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Arizona’s Jeff Flake, are both part of the “Gang of Eight.”

That group hopes to unveil legislation next month that would provide a broad framework largely in line with the Obama administration’s priorities for the bill.

But in a statement, Sessions urged a slower and less sweeping approach to address the reform.

"A sound process will take months, not days or weeks," he said. "And we’d be better off taking a step-by-step approach than trying to deal with these complex and emotional issues in one massive piece of legislation."

NBC's Kasie Hunt contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 6:16 PM EDT

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:21 PM EDT

Did Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, R, endorse a pathway to citizenship in his speech before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this morning?

That’s what an Associated Press article previewing the speech said, as well as a report shortly before Paul’s speech published by Buzzfeed.

But the Kentucky senator made no mention of citizenship itself in his speech; he focused his remarks on the need for creating a “legal” status for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.

And an unnamed Paul adviser subsequently disputed to the Washington Post the idea that the popular conservative senator had, in fact, backed citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“The AP story was wrong, which spurred a lot of erroneous reports,” the adviser told the Post. “He does not mention ‘path to citizenship’ in his speech at all.”

The difference between citizenship and legal status might seem semantic, but it is an important distinction in the legislative battle over comprehensive immigration reform. Democrats believe that citizenship is an essential element of any final deal, and the bipartisan “Group of Eight” in the Senate working toward a compromise includes such a path in its framework.

The speech was good enough to win praise from Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, N.Y., a major Senate proponent of citizenship.

"The consensus continues to grow in favor of immigration reform that contains a path to citizenship," Schumer said in a statement. "While there are certainly differences between our emerging product and Senator Paul's outline, there is also a lot of common ground."

Paul explained the finer details of his plan to reporters following his speech. In essence, his plan would distribute indefinite work visas to qualified undocumented immigrants in stages, allowing them legal status in the United States. Once those workers have visas, they would then have the option of applying for citizenship – though not necessarily with any preferential or expedited pathway.

“You get in the same lines, you get in the line wherever you sign up, you don’t go to the front of any line,” he explained. “And I know that sounds silly, but front or back of the line seems to be this thing that’s really important to people. So what I would say is, you have the option to get in the line without going home. That’s the main difference from what we have now, as well as you get a work visa if you want to work.”

He also said he wasn’t necessarily comfortable with forcing those seeking citizenship to pay fines.

“And I’m not a huge fan of the fines, necessarily,” he said. “I think a lot of these immigrants are workers who don’t have a lot of money.”

A major sticking point, though, for Paul is subjecting certification of border security to a vote in Congress. In his plan, lawmakers would have an annual option to vote on an administration’s report that the border has been secured before moving forward with the visa process. He said he would try to amend the Group of Eight’s eventual legislation to include something like this.

“I want to try to amend their package, and I would likely vote for it if I could get mine on,” he said, adding that he wasn’t sure whether failing to do so would lose his support.

The conflicting comments and careful language, though, reflect the political difficulty for conservatives in embracing comprehensive immigration reform, especially if it involves a pathway to citizenship. And he took strides to quell those concerns in his speech.

“My plan will not grant amnesty or move anyone to the front of the line,” he said.

President Barack Obama huddled with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill Tuesday, stepping onto congressional turf as part of a week of outreach to both his own party and his GOP rivals.

With new budget and gun control bills snaking through the legislative process -- and with comprehensive immigration reform measures being drafted by bipartisan lawmakers -- Obama’s series of in-person conversations with congressional heavies are meant to smooth the way for compromise after the budget sequester stalemate last month.  

But it’s not exactly a bipartisan campfire kumbaya.

Even as the president was leaving the building, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has already said he will object to a bipartisan measure to temporarily fund the federal government -- a snag that could slow efforts to avert a government shutdown later this month.

Jacquelyn Martin / Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. walks toward the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Dec. 31, 2012.

“This is in this new era of ‘let’s get along,’ all this cheering and yelling about this ‘bipartisan’ bill,” Reid lamented to reporters after meeting with Obama, “I just learned when I was in here with the president that -- who else? -- Coburn now won’t let us move the bill.”

And the news of that hiccup wasn’t the only challenge Obama received during his trek to Capitol Hill.

One Democrat in the room told NBC News that a senior senator in the closed-door meeting challenged the president on his administration’s unmanned drone policy, saying the White House has treated Obama’s own party poorly in dealing with the issue.

The meeting with Senate Democrats -- which participants said included discussion of entitlement reform, immigration and gun control -- kicked off a series of closed-door sessions that Obama has scheduled this week with lawmakers on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave, including a Wednesday luncheon with House Republicans.

His conspicuous “charm offensive” aimed at the GOP started last week, when he dined with a dozen Republican senators as well as with House budget chief Rep. Paul Ryan.

For the most part, Republicans say ‘the more, the better’ when it comes to Obama’s outreach.  

“We welcome it,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

“It’s a good opportunity to have a candid conversation and we all know that, with the president’s request to raise the debt ceiling here again later this summer, we will be discussing again the possibility of finally solving our huge deficit and debt problems by making the kind of changes to [entitlements] that we all know we have to make to save these programs and save our country,” McConnell said.

Still, the effort has not been without some skeptics.

A National Journal report out Tuesday morning quoted an unnamed White House aide griping that the vigorous schedule of bipartisan meetings is “a joke” and a waste of time staged merely to make the press “happy.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed that sentiment as inaccurate during a briefing with reporters.

“I have no idea who said that," he said. "But I can tell you that opinion has never been voiced in my presence, in the president's presence, in the West Wing. It does not represent the president's view, it does not represent the White House's view, and it does not represent the administration's view."

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 5, 2013 1:49 PM EST

In an apparent reversal from his past statements, former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday that his immigration reform plan would "fall short" of offering a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in the United States -- a key provision being put forward by the bipartisan group leading reform efforts on Capitol Hill.

“Our proposal is a proposal that looks forward, and if we want to create an immigration policy that's going to work, we can't continue to make illegal immigration an easier path than legal immigration,” Bush said on NBC’s TODAY Show.

Bush -- an outspoken proponent of GOP outreach to Latinos who has previously embraced a path to citizenship -- said that he backs measures to allow illegal immigrants to become residents of the United States if they meet certain criteria. But he argued that the possibility of full citizenship would merely encourage more illegal immigrants to make their way inside the nation’s borders.

“There has to be some difference between people who come here legally and illegally,” he said. “It's just a matter of common sense and a matter of the rule of law. If we're not going to apply the law fairly and consistently, then we're going to have another wave of illegal immigrants coming into the country.”

Related: Jeb Bush: I won't rule out 2016 White House run 'but I won't declare today'

Bush’s rejection of that goal appears to be a turnaround for the possible presidential prospect. In a June 2012 interview with Charlie Rose, he acknowledged that his support for a path to citizenship placed him at odds with many in his party.

“You have to deal with this issue. You can’t ignore it,” he said during that interview. “And so, either a path to citizenship -- which I would support and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives -- or a path to legalization, a path to residency of some kind.”

In a January op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Bush and Clint Bolick, his co-author on a new book about immigration, wrote that opportunities for citizenship strengthen America. 

"America's immigration system should provide opportunities for people who share the country's core values to become citizens, thereby strengthening the nation as have countless immigrants have before them," he said. (In the same op-ed, the pair also wrote that "amnesty promotes illegal immigration.")

Bush's voiced opposition to full citizenship rights also puts the former governor – and brother of former President George W. Bush – to the right of Republican senators like John McCain, Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake, all members of the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” currently tackling immigration reform legislation.

That group’s proposal would offer “probationary legal status” for illegal immigrants who register with the federal government, pass a background check and pay back taxes and fines.  After certain border security criteria are met, those individuals would become eligible to apply for green cards and – eventually – the ability to seek full citizenship.

Bush appeared on the TODAY show to promote his book “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” which hits shelves tomorrow. 

NBC's Mark Murray contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Mon Mar 4, 2013 1:18 PM EST

A recurring fear has colored Republicans’ attitude toward the current immigration reform debate in Congress: President Barack Obama has no actual interest in reaching a deal, and is instead pursuing the issue to exacerbate the GOP’s problems with Hispanic voters.

Yet all of the evidence so far – whether in his speeches and or his relations with Congress – suggests he and his administration clearly want a deal that he could sign into law.

Politics, of course, play an undeniable role in the renewed effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, especially given that Obama won more than 70 percent of the Latino vote in the 2012 election. Consequently, Republicans who had previously resisted any legislation that offered a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s some 11 million undocumented immigrants have now reversed course.

Isaac Brekken / AP

In this Jan. 29, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas.

“The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens and we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our Hispanic citizens but this is a preeminent issue with those citizens,” Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican member of the bipartisan Senate group working toward an immigration accord, said bluntly upon the introduction of that proposal’s framework.

But Republicans have warily engaged the new debate over immigration with active fears that the president’s true intentions on immigration are half-hearted, at best.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s established himself as an outspoken conservative after just a couple of months on the job, was only the latest Republican to give voice to that fear.

“I don’t believe President Obama wants an immigration bill to pass, instead I think he wants a political issue,” he said in a speech on Wednesday, according to a report by the Houston Chronicle. ”His objective is to push so much on the table that he forces Republicans walk away from the table because then he wants to use that issue in 2014 and 2016 as a divisive wedge issue.”

It’s a fear that many of Cruz’s fellow elected Republicans appear to share.

“The question that many of us are asking, Republicans and Democrats, is he looking to play politics or does he want to solve the problem?” Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the former GOP vice presidential nominee, asked during his Jan. 27 appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press” preceding Obama’s major policy speech on immigration.

Republicans carefully watched that speech with concerns that Obama would eventually demagogue immigration. The president generally did the opposite; he used the speech to carefully embrace the bipartisan Senate talks, while warning that the administration would have its own backup plan at the ready for congressional consideration should the Senate talks fail. He further embraced a bipartisan speech in prime time, during his State of the Union address.

“As we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done. Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away.”

But Republicans’ concerns that Obama will jilt the GOP on immigration very much inform the work toward a comprehensive reform law, and help explain part of the reason why the politics of the issue are so fraught.

When a draft of the White House’s immigration reform proposal leaked over the weekend, Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is helping negotiate the Senate plan, pronounced it dead on arrival in Congress.

“It’s a mistake for the White House to draft immigration legislation without seeking input from Republican members of Congress,” Rubio said in a statement.

Rubio’s scorching statement was also intended to maintain credibility with conservatives, whose support – or, at least, tolerance – of an immigration overhaul the Cuban-American senator’s worked to win.

(And, for his part, Obama said that the leak was but a hiccup. “It certainly did not jeopardize the entire process,” he told an Univision affiliate in Texas. “The negotiations are still moving forward.”)

But as Republicans tread carefully toward an immigration agreement, they might also keep in mind the political skin Obama has put at stake with this issue.

For as ballyhooed as Obama’s 44-point advantage over Republican nominee Mitt Romney among Hispanic or Latino voters has been, the president had to quell frustration among Latino voters about his failure to pursue immigration in his first term. He faced some of his toughest questioning of the campaign on that very issue during a town hall last September with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, who pointedly accused Obama of breaking his promise to bring up an immigration reform bill during his first year in office. Latino activists have repeatedly criticized Obama for overseeing a record pace of deportations during his first term.

What’s more, Obama basically premised his plea for Latinos’ votes on the premise that, if they helped re-elect him, immigration reform would finally be achievable.

“What I’m absolutely certain of is if the Latino community and the American community that cares about this issue turns out to vote, they can send a message that this is not something to use as a political football, that people’s lives are at stake, that this is a problem that we can solve and historically has had bipartisan support,” Obama said in the same Univision forum.

That’s to say: if immigration reform fails during Obama’s second term, there will be more than enough political fallout to spread around.

Fuming Arizona constituents fired criticism at Sen. John McCain over illegal immigration at town halls Tuesday.

“You said ‘build the dang fence’ – where’s the fence?” one constituent named Keith Smith demanded of McCain.

“He doesn’t want the American people to stand up and ask him the tough questions and hold his feet to the fire,” Smith told NBC affiliate KPNX.

McCain told the crowd that Americans would not support a move to arrest all illegal immigrants in the United States and deport them. He also said he wouldn’t support an effort to make people who had been in the United States illegally for decades to become guest workers because “we’re a Judeo-Christian principled nation,” drawing an angry response from some in the crowd.

McCain is a member of a bipartisan group of senators which is now working on drafting legislation akin to the bill which the Arizona senator supported in 2007, in partnership with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D- Mass. and others, to create a process for illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents of the United States. That effort collapsed mostly due to conservative Republican opposition.

When McCain ran for re-election in 2010, he survived a challenge from a conservative, J.D. Hayworth, in the Republican priamry. And in the general election he emphasized the need for greater efforts to stop illegal immigrants from slipping over the Mexican border – rather than his previous support for a legalization process.

Sen. Marco Rubio really wants nothing to do with President Barack Obama's immigration backup plan.

Rubio's office on Tuesday released a statement insisting that the plan the Florida Republican is working on has "major differences" from the White House blueprint that was leaked to USA Today over the weekend. Spokesman Alex Conant pointed to a number of measures they say are missing from the White House plan: tying the a path to citizenship to border security, a new visa exit system and a plan to deal with future immigrants.

And Conant said no one in Rubio's office has met with the White House to talk immigration.

"President Obama and the White House staff are not working with Republicans on immigration reform. Senator Rubio’s office has never discussed immigration policy with anyone in the White House," Conant said.

On Tuesday, the White House insisted it was in fact working with lawmakers on the issue. Obama has said he wants the Senate to write a bipartisan immigration proposal, but that he'll release his own plan if that process drags.

"We have been in contact with everyone involved in this effort on Capitol Hill," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

Asked to clarify, Rubio's spokesman said the administration had sent agency officials to brief Senate staffers for the bipartisan group of eight senators who are working on immigration reform -- but insisted policy was not discussed.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

"They've never asked for our input. (And, frankly, we've never asked for theirs.)," Conant wrote in an email.
Senior administration officials said that staffers from the White House had attended at least 5 briefings with congressional staffers working on bipartisan reform. At different points, officials from relevant government agencies also briefed the staff group.

Some Republicans have suggested the White House's separate plan could help GOP supporters distance themselves from the president and highlight the compromises in a Senate plan. Rubio's office rejected that analysis.

"The White House has injected additional partisanship into an already difficult process, and raised fresh questions about the president’s seriousness about passing reform," Conant said.

President Barack Obama’s allies in organized labor and progressive groups are drawing a line in the sand when it comes to so-called “triggers” that would require a secure border as a precondition to allowing undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Left-leaning groups told the president during a meeting this week that any preconditions on creating a pathway to citizenship would be a deal-breaker in terms of winning their support.

 “That is not the starting point,” said Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center when asked about part of the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform proposal that would make prospects for full citizenship contingent on increased border security. “What we are demanding is a road to citizenship that's clear, that's direct, not contingent at all on additional enforcement.” 

The concept is one of the “basic legislative pillars” of a bipartisan Senate proposal on comprehensive immigration reform. While vague, the language is geared towards conservative lawmakers who want tough enforcement mechanisms in place before a path to citizenship can be formed.

The second of the Senate’s four pillars reads: “Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required.”

The trigger has been an essential component for conservatives like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, one of the four Republican senators to help craft the plan.

“I will not be supporting any law that does not ensure that the enforcement things happen," he told conservative blogger Ed Morrisey in late January.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

President Barack Obama waves as he walks on the South Lawn of the White House on Feb. 6 before his departure to Annapolis, Md.

But progressive groups have been ratcheting up the pressure on the president, whom they assert agrees about the concept of a trigger.

“There is clear alignment between us and the president and we look forward to expressing that power as the debate carries forward,” said Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress, adding, “We're going to focus like a laser beam on the path to citizenship.”

While White House press secretary Jay Carney seemed to split the difference between the two approaches, saying the president remained committed to both border security and a path to citizenship, but not going so far as to link the two.

“He remains, as part of the comprehensive immigration reform process, committed to increasing our border security further,” Carney said. “But when we talk about comprehensive immigration reform, we're talking about a whole package that moves as a whole, and that includes a clear path to citizenship for people who are affected here,” Carney said.

Cornell University Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert, said one possible compromise between the two sides would be an enforcement mechanism based on objective criteria, like a certain number of Border Patrol agents along the border or amount of money spent on security.

But he said that if Republicans insist on a subjective measure, such as whether a poll finds the majority of Americans think the border is secure, or whether Republican governors of border states agree the border is secure, common ground will be much more difficult to find.

Asked about the political feasibility of objective measures in a final immigration bill, Yale-Loehr said, “I would hope than an objective one would satisfy the conservatives enough that they could live with it while not antagonizing the other side too much.”

The two pressure points to watch on immigration… The gun debate begins on Capitol Hill… Breaking news: Economy contracted in the 4^th quarter… The unrest in Egypt… Hillary on 2016… Teeing up Thursday’s confirmation for Chuck Hagel… All eyes on Deval Patrick, Scott Brown… And updating the Obama cabinet shuffle.

*** Two pressure points to watch on immigration: It’s been quite a revealing past 48 hours in the still-evolving debate over immigration, with Monday’s bipartisan Senate framework and Tuesday’s speech by President Obama. So what have we learned? There are two pressure points that either could create enough force to ensure legislation gets through Congress, or that could scuttle any chance for a deal. One, Marco Rubio and Republicans considering any comprehensive immigration reform want a "trigger" to make sure that border enforcement comes before legalization. “Unless there’s real enforcement triggers, we are not going to have a bill that moves on the opportunity to apply for a green card,” Rubio told Rush Limbaugh yesterday. (The big question here, of course: What would these “triggers” be?) Two, Obama yesterday vowed to bring his own legislation if Congress doesn't quickly act. Translation: He'll blame Republicans for this failure. “If Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away,” the president said in Las Vegas yesterday.

*** What the debate isn’t about: So those are the two big issues moving forward -- GOP pressure on Democrats for an enforcement trigger, and White House/Dem pressure on Republicans not to delay the legislation (a la what happened to health care in 2009). But here’s something this debate IS NOT about: whether Obama wants to use immigration as a way to club Republicans. It’s not even a question. The idea that anyone outside of political partisans -- or those looking for a reason to be against reform (but don’t want to look anti-Hispanic) -- believes that Obama doesn’t want to sign historic immigration legislation to fulfill a campaign promise is a bit naïve. Sure, the president is using campaign tactics to pressure Congress, but he wants the legislative “win”; he already got the political “win” in 2012. Don’t forget what happened during the fiscal-cliff debate just a month ago: The White House is always looking to cut a deal, even if it gets just half a loaf. There’s no political reward for not getting anything done for him in a second term. That’s the “leverage” that GOPers actually have with the president. That said, the president’s leverage is the public’s opinion. And if the WaPo/ABC poll, which shows his favorability rating at 60%, is not an outlier that will change the equation on Capitol Hill -- not just on immigration but other issues. Reason Magazine (which uses Princeton Survey Research, the same folks that conduct the Pew poll) has the president’s job-approval rating at 52%.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., questions Senator John Kerry (Not Pictured) during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on Kerry's nomination to be secretary of state, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 24, 2013.

*** Gun debate begins on Capitol Hill: Today, however, immigration takes a back seat to the debate over guns. At 10:00 am ET, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on gun violence. Testifying: Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, and the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre. (And NBC’s Frank Thorp confirms that Giffords herself will appear at the hearing. She will speak though not testify.) According to his prepared testimony, LaPierre will come out against even universal background checks, per NBC’s Kasie Hunt. “When it comes to the issue of background checks, let’s be honest -- background checks will never be ‘universal’ – because criminals will never submit to them,” he’s expected to say. Does this NRA line in the sand on universal background checks spook someone like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who appears to be open to such a measure and might actually co-sponsor Schumer’s bill? Another thing to consider here. It seems like an assault-weapons ban has little chance of passing the Senate. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allowing it to come to a vote means that pro-gun Democrats can vote against THAT measure but vote for something else (like background checks).

*** Breaking news: Economy contracted in the 4^th quarter: But both guns and immigration might get eclipsed by this breaking news: The U.S. economy contracted in the 4^th quarter. The AP: “The U.S. economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That's a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter.”

*** More unrest in Egypt: What is taking place in Egypt is another big story. The New York Times: “A prominent Egyptian opposition leader called on President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday to hold a national dialogue, a day after the nation’s top general warned that the state itself was in danger of collapse because of violence verging on anarchy in three Suez Canal cities.” In her exit interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Clinton commented on Mubarak’s ouster from Egypt, and she stood by what is the one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions the administration made that gets very little re-visiting: “It was an inevitable force of history that when the Egyptian people were rising up in such large numbers -- asking for what we believe in, freedom and opportunity, a chance to, you know, chart their own democratic future -- the United States cannot and should not be on the side of those who deny that.” Clinton added to FOX about the current situation there: “We have to work for, along with the international community, as well as people inside Egypt, is not to see these revolutions hijacked by extremists, not to see the return of dictatorial rule, the absence of the rule of law. And it's hard. It's hard going from decades under one-party or one-man rule, as somebody said, waking up from a political coma and understanding democracy. So we have a lot at stake in trying to keep moving these transformations in the right direction.”

*** Hillary and 2016: Of course, Clinton was also asked about 2016 in these exit interviews. And she used them to all of them to say not much new. Here’s what she told NBC’s Mitchell: “I don't have any decisions made. I have no real plans to make any such decisions. I'm looking forward to some very quiet time catching up on everything from sleep, to reading, to walking, with my family. I think it’s hard to imagine for me what it will be like next week when I wake up and I have nowhere to go. Maybe I'll go back to sleep for a change!” Bottom line: If she had to make her decision today, she’d probably be a “no.” But she’s also not shutting the door, either.

*** Teeing up Hagel’s confirmation hearing: Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing to be Obama’s next defense secretary is set for tomorrow. And per NBC’s Kasie Hunt and Mike Viqueira, he’ll be introduced by two former chairmen of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Democrat Sam Nunn and Republican John Warner. White House officials point to comments from Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip, who hasn't counted any "no" votes on Hagel among Democrats. Hunt and Viq add that the White House also points to friendly words from Republicans, including Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. And now Roll Call is reporting that Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi says he plans to vote for Hagel’s confirmation. Our take: Barring Hagel somehow melting down during his hearings, he’s on track for confirmation.

*** All eyes on Patrick, Scott Brown: After the Senate easily confirmed John Kerry to be secretary of state, by a 94-3 vote, all eyes are on Deval Patrick – as well as Scott Brown. Patrick’s pick to fill name an interim senator to fill Kerry’s Senate seat could come as early as today. And the AP reports that Brown is “leaning strongly toward” running the special election to replace Kerry.

*** Updating the cabinet shuffle: With Ray LaHood’s announcement that he will be stepping down from his post as Transportation secretary after his successor is confirmed, here are the cabinet members leaving, plus their replacements if applicable:

Hillary Clinton at State (John Kerry confirmed)
Leon Panetta at Defense (Chuck Hagel nominated)
Tim Geithner at Treasury (Jack Lew nominated)
Hilda Solis at Labor
Lisa Jackson at EPA
Ken Salazar at Interior
Ray LaHood at Transportation

And here are the cabinet secretaries who are remaining:

Janet Napolitano (DHS)
Arne Duncan (Education)
Tom Vilsack (Agriculture)
Eric Holder (Justice)
Kathleen Sebelius (HHS)
Eric Shinseki (Veterans Affairs)

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